If you can do an out of office reply on your email and set up an after hours voice mail greeting, that may help. Then when she complains, you can point out the fact that she was given various ways to reach your company after hours and chose not to.

POD. I don;t think this has anything to do with whether you work on an hourly basis or not. And give that your company has out of office cover, even if it is an emergency (which doesn't seem to be the case) she has options.

I agree with PPs that you don't owe her an explanation. If she starts on the line of "you should..." then politely respond "as I;ve explained, I am available from 8030 to 5. Outside those hours, you may contact our 24 hour helpline or the production supervisor. I'm happy to give your those numbers again"

I would however endorse the suggestion to put 'out of office' including those details onto your e-mail (if you are not set up to do this, could you suggest it to your bosses? Explain that you've had client's get upset because they've worked out the time differences wrong, and this would help ensure that they don't feel they are being ignored.)

I have the opposite problem. I basically work all the time and need to send emails to my employees at off times. I tell them not to check their emails until the next work day but some of them choose to respond to me anyway.

Just keep repeating that out of hours escalations cannot be handled via email and provide the appropriate escalation methods. It doesn't matter that you are hourly. Even salary employees deserve to have some downtime.

I have the opposite problem. I basically work all the time and need to send emails to my employees at off times. I tell them not to check their emails until the next work day but some of them choose to respond to me anyway.

POD! Just because I'm up at 1am and sending emails I don't expect my staff to be checking. If I really need them I'll call.

Heh. I wouldn't say anything about being hourly or not being on call. That's not her problem and she won't care.

Instead, phrase it as though you're letting her in on a sneaky secret:

Dear Ms Snowflake

This office is staffed from 8:30 to 5:00, Monday to Friday but if you find you absolutely need something done outside those hours, the quickest way to make sure that happens is to contact Bob or Sue in Production at (number/e-mail).

I have the opposite problem. I basically work all the time and need to send emails to my employees at off times. I tell them not to check their emails until the next work day but some of them choose to respond to me anyway.

POD! Just because I'm up at 1am and sending emails I don't expect my staff to be checking. If I really need them I'll call.

If you are using Outlook, there is an option to delay delivery. That way you can send e-mails to get them done, but they won't reach the recipient until the time you specify.

What I ended up doing was to turn on an email out-of-office notification every evening when I left work. On weekdays it sad "I am out of the office until tomorrow morning at 8am, and will address your issue at that time. If this is an emergency you can contact XXX at XXX-XXX-XXXX for after-hours help." On weekends, it said "I am out of the office until Monday morning at 8am, and will address your issue at that time. If this is an emergency you can contact XXX at XXX-XXX-XXXX for after-hours help."

PA? You bet. But it got the point across.

I was (and am still) salaried, so I get paid the same regardless of whether I work 40 hours a week or 60 hours, so this makes me very reluctant to do any work past that 40 hour mark. If I got hourly or overtime pay, then I might have been willing to deal with after-hours or weekend issues.

What I ended up doing was to turn on an email out-of-office notification every evening when I left work. On weekdays it sad "I am out of the office until tomorrow morning at 8am, and will address your issue at that time. If this is an emergency you can contact XXX at XXX-XXX-XXXX for after-hours help." On weekends, it said "I am out of the office until Monday morning at 8am, and will address your issue at that time. If this is an emergency you can contact XXX at XXX-XXX-XXXX for after-hours help."

PA? You bet. But it got the point across.

I was (and am still) salaried, so I get paid the same regardless of whether I work 40 hours a week or 60 hours, so this makes me very reluctant to do any work past that 40 hour mark. If I got hourly or overtime pay, then I might have been willing to deal with after-hours or weekend issues.

I am an administrative support person, I have a company phone with e-mail. We get lectured that we are not supposed to check e-mail, etc when we are on our own time. The disconnect comes when logging on Monday morning to find out that 9PM Sunday night a message was sent to you that Supervisor needs an office at X site for 7AM Monday, but you are not expected to know about this until you come in on Monday. Even starting at 6:30AM, it is a close run to find a space and send a note before 7. - i.e. I check e-mail over the weekend so there are no surprises Monday morning. This year I leave the phone home when I go on vacation.

I'd send the client an email that details your company's System for Handling Problems After Hours. Call it a system, and a lot of clients will be happy.

Then I'd let my supervisor know that one specific client isn't happy with the current method of dealing with things on evenings and weekends. Because if one client isn't happy, there are probably more clients who are unhappy but just not saying anything. I'd worry that a good client might get fed up with what they see as lack of customer support on weekends and move to a different provider that has weekend support.

There are all sorts of solutions to this that don't involve people having to check their email and work over the weekend. But it is up to the powers that be to figure this out, not the OP. And certainly not something the client can demand.

I think you handled it fine. Probably, nothing you say is going to make this particular person happy, because she wants everyone to revolve around her. So I would just keep politely repeating your hours and how she can get a hold of someone (else) at other times, occasionally putting it in writing with a CC to your boss as well.

This individual sounds like a pill, but generally speaking, companies have so many different policies and job categories that I wouldn't automatically understand the limitations of the person I was dealing with, especially if they ever made an exception for me (not saying you did, just in general). If I came off as clueless (hopefully not actively rude!) I hope the person would just reiterate their hours and my other options, maybe adding, "These are my hours, and I'm not able to access work data outside of them," or something like that, just to drill it in (politely).

I think "I am not authorized for overtime. I cannot respond to your emails or perform any other job-related tasks during my non-working hours. Please contact (whoever) after 5PM and on weekends." might be a good way to phrase the response.